


twenty nine pearls

by thimble



Category: James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: F/M, M/M, OT3, Q the fandom bicycle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-14
Updated: 2012-11-14
Packaged: 2017-11-18 16:40:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimble/pseuds/thimble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They need something to orbit, Eve and him, even though James is a fading moon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	twenty nine pearls

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Everybody Here Wants You' by Jeff Buckley.

James is mercury, synonymous with fast cars, quick deaths and fleeting loves. When he comes back with Silva in tow there are marks on his neck, left by something more potent than fists or bullets. No one says a word. No one even thinks it.

Q turns to unravel Silva's little gift.

 

 

 

He sees them together, more often than not, when he turns up after weeks of radio silence. Mallory - not M, not yet - is lenient with him; he supposes that's just a pattern. He turns a blind eye when James sidles in closer to Eve, never too close, but enough to set her apart.

There are etchings on his face that go too deep, like a sculptor's mistake, but they almost look like laugh lines when Eve is around.

Almost.

 

 

 

Eve keeps everything running. She processes the information that keeps England on her feet, and only tells Mallory the important things. He worries about them, he sorts them out, but Eve carries them all first. She's Atlas in black pumps with a Glock 19 strapped to her thigh.

She keeps James on the cusp of sanity; she flies halfway around the world to deliver messages even if she doesn't have to. She held his life and his death in her hands once, and she does it again.

And again.

 

 

 

He's sheepish when she lifts his mug and there's a dried tea circle under it. She picks at the stain with a nail, and sighs. Ever patient.

"Keep your quarters clean, Quartermaster."

He adjusts the glasses on his nose to look busy, even if he's the last person who needs to prove it. I'm trying, he says. He cut me off again.

She drops her lips to his cheek, comforting, but her eyes know better. 

"Not for too long."

Eve's right, as always.

 

 

 

James resurfaces with three ruined suits and no new scars. Nothing that hurt, at least. Q can barely make out the ghosts of thin wrists wrapped around James's nape, but they're there. He's read the file, the names listed under collateral. 

They're pretty names, and the faces beside them are still pretty, too.

At least the photographs are.

 

 

 

This is vile, James tells him, sipping from his mug. His first button is undone; that was from the time he spent in Eve's office. She's gone home, and put some of James' burden to bed.

The rest he unloads here, now, on Q's desk that's neater than normal. It's strange, but his shoulders lose their guard the more he frowns.

You can brew your own, Q replies, but he doesn't wrench the mug away.

 

 

 

Today Eve's flustered, and it shows only in the corner of her mouth where her hand wavered while applying lipstick.

Q doesn't point it out.

It's because someone fired at Mallory's head, and missed by a few inches. She fired back and her aim rang true at the would-be assassin's shoulder. Mallory's survived worse.

It's not because James' lips were swollen, cut slightly by teeth.

 

 

 

You should take a day off, Q tells her.

Eve gives him a look that shrunk him near-microscopic, something that all of James' ribbing about his age have never managed.

"People aren't programs, Q." She switched between watching the screen, and his typing. She kissed his palm once, told him he had nice hands.

"You can't analyze them."

Of course you can, he wants to say, but not in the way she meant.

 

 

 

M - the M who made them all - has been dead for six months. Q doesn't see James or Eve in the office. It's all silent on the physical front. He stays inside, because there's always work to be done.

When they do show up there's a trickling of sweat on James' forehead, and some earth coating the heels of Eve's shoes. It's not hard to realize where they've been. 

They peruse the private liquor cabinet. Q keeps his focus on the servers, makes firewalls for firewalls. The rest of his branch stay out of his way. It's a private commemoration.

He failed her once.

 

 

 

The lights are dim, energy-saving, and the floor is mostly deserted. James and Eve come out from her office; she bids him goodbye with a hand on the arm, sends him over to Q. She's off to get enough sleep for the three of them, god knows someone has to.

Same old routine.

James stands beside Q, and looks at the things he can only sometimes understand. It's quiet, except for the times Q explains what he's doing, fingers faster than his tongue could manage. James, surprisingly, doesn't take it as condescension.

He's glad. He hears of James' world day in and out, can picture effortlessly how blood splatters from the sound of a shot. It's rare that James gets a glimpse of his.

 

 

 

Do you want to go back? he asks her. He's doing a review of James' latest assignment: desert-colored snapshots, hacked satellite feeds, a detailed medical report of his injuries.

She's reading them, too, and stops somewhere along the cracked ribs, six and seven. She heard the question.

"No," she says, even if her gaze is perpetually distant, on a horizon beyond the walls of MI6. There's longing there, and Q can imagine the prickle of her sunburnt skin after being out too long on surveillance.

"This is where I'm meant to be."

 

 

 

James has restraint like a circus animal, practiced and tamed with Eve in the room. He does not let his gaze linger, especially not when she walks away. If their voices drop, low and falsely intimate, then that's for them to keep and for Q to notice.

He backs against the table when James steps towards him. He swallows when James touches his throat and fixes the knot of his tie. The animal's prowling, but Eve isn't here. 

The hands drop. Q only now realizes that he's a tamer, too.

 

 

 

They're listening. James hasn't cut them off.

Q wants to invent a machine that can translate bed noises into comprehensible speech. He can't make out what James is trying to tell them, though understanding was clear on Eve's face long before they heard clothes rustling off.

James groans. There's no discernible difference between this and the sounds he made when in pain.

It's a perfect copy, just like Q thought it would be. 

 

 

 

He's there, three days later, with other agents rolling his stone back and fixing his mess. There's a journey of a knifepoint down his cheek, a flimsy band-aid soaking up the leaks.

Don't count on me, he says, in all the toys he doesn't return.

 

 

 

Q's made two typographical errors in ten minutes. Eve makes him a fresh kettle, even refills his mug. She's an angel, really.

James isn't.

Why not us? he says, needing an outlet, would voice it even if she wasn't there. He could blackmail everyone on the planet into submission but there are answers computers can't give.

Eve does it with ease.

"We matter." If her smile is a little rueful, neither of them bring it up.

 

 

 

They work, in a fucked up way. James saves the world but he'll never be a hero, Q's the voice in their ears that's rarely listened to and Eve, she's stronger than all the double-oh's combined but she isn't charging headfirst anymore.

They need something to orbit, Eve and him, even though James is a fading moon.

 

 

 

James tosses something on his desk, and it's a temporary blur because he'd been in the middle of wiping his glasses on his jumper.

He puts them on, picks up the object and peers at it.

It's in one piece, he says. James stares ahead, but there was a shrug in there.

Now you'll stop complaining.

He scoffs, half-hearted. Hardly.

Q knows Eve is watching from the corner of her immaculate eyes. Her boys, Q thinks she's thinking, their ages irrelevant.

He doesn't smile when he checks the pen for damages, and James doesn't either. 

 

 

 

They kiss for three, him and Eve. They pause, as if waiting for someone else to breathe, and leave a little room between their lips. Just a little.

"You don't fuck with your constants," she sighs, and she makes the dirtiest words seem delicate. Q presses his mouth to her shut eyes because there's a burning beneath his lids and he doesn't know why.

Eve curls a hand at his neck, the one she could snap at any moment if she chooses. Her touch is tentative, like it needs to be tamed.

"You don't mess with the things you could lose."

 

 

 

_I know they all look so good from a distance_

_But I tell you I'm the one_


End file.
